


Blame It On The Girl

by Sherlocked



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: College, Drug Addiction, F/M, Mob Killing, Not Really Character Death, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlocked/pseuds/Sherlocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blame it on the girls who know what to do, blame it on the boys who keep hitting on you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Liz (holyoils on tumblr) for being my beta even though this isn't her pairing. This probably would have been /really/ bad without her.

Sherlock Holmes is probably the smartest man you’ll ever meet. He could deduce anything and everything about a person with even the slightest effort, and make it seem as if it was the most magical thing in the world, even if it was as plain as day.

The problem was that Sherlock Holmes was a junkie, as well as cut off from his family. He really didn’t have anything to support him, except a crap apartment, a meager allowance, and any heroin he could get his hands on.

He was just waking up from his last high, leaned up against a tree, when he saw her first.

She had bright red hair up in a ponytail, copper penny eyes. She was in jeans and converse, a beat up hoodie half-covering a babydoll that read, ‘Also, I can kill you with my brain’. One eyebrow was arched, she was crouched in front of him, leaning to the left to offset the weight of her shoulder bag on her right hip.

“You look like crap.” Sherlock blinked. Her accent was American, and oddly pitched. It was almost musical. Sherlock let his brain drift on it for a while before he came back to Earth.

“Thank you,” he said, wincing slightly; his voice was hoarse, talking felt awful.

“Do you have any idea what time it is? Day? Week? Month?”

“Last I bothered to check, it was November 15th, 2010.”

“Close, props. It’s the 16th. And about 4ish.” Sherlock let his forehead furrow.

“Huh. Later than I thought.” He pulled his legs under him and tried to stand up. His head hit a low-hanging branch with a _thunk_ , making his head swim even more and adding to his body’s reaction to the whole ‘getting up’ thing. He stumbled forward, clutching at his head, surprise forcing his eyes open when arms wrapped around his torso to help keep him upright, putting him face to face with the woman. In the back of his head, he realized that she was young, late teens. 

However, that thought was sort of blocked out by the rest of his brain’s thinking, all of which was overridden by the thought that she was _beautiful_.

“Oh, you’re still coming down, aren’t you. Alright, do you have an apartment?” Sherlock nodded, fuzzy.

He almost yelped when she started moving him, eyes closing with a groan when his back hit a lamppost, letting his head drop onto into the cool metal. He didn’t even notice her going through his pockets until he opened his eyes to see her going through his wallet, his phone sticking out of the front pocket of her jeans.

“Alrighty.” She put them back in his pockets and rested her hands on his shoulders. “I am going to get you in a cab, try not to throw up on me.” Sherlock did his best to glare.

~

Sherlock was actually sort of surprised that she got in the cab with him. She paid the driver and pulled him out after her, an arm wrapped around his waist. She eyed the building in front of them, which he ignored in favor of watching her.

“First or second floor?”

“Second.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“With the amount of drugs you take? Are you-” She stopped speaking, shaking her head. “Nevermind, yes, you are, and probably were.”

“What?”

“High.” She led the way forward, pulling his keys out of his pocket with vaguely worrying amount of finesse for someone her age. She looked over the keys before eyeing the lock, selecting a key and unlocking the door before taking him upstairs and repeating the process.

She dumped him on the couch, tossing his keys on the coffee table before walking into the kitchen and making an _ick_ noise. There was the sound of running water followed by a click. She walked back over, dropping her bag on the coffee table and sitting next to Sherlock. He let his head roll to the side and looked at her.

“What’s your name?”

“Irene. Adler.”

“Sherlock Holmes. Where are you from and how are you so good at picking pockets?”

“NYC, and my dissolute youth, which also involved picking pockets, locks, and stealing cars. What kind of a name is Sherlock and why are you getting high?”

“It’s a family name and it shuts my brain down.” Irene blinked.

“That’s stupid.”

“Probably. What are you in university for? And how are you in university, if you had such a dissolute youth?”

“Scholarship, full, and Communications. How could you tell?”

“I deduced. You’re too old to still be in school, your bag is too thick for most normal books.”

“Huh. Cool.” He was perfectly aware that his forehead scrunched up

“Thanks.” She raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Most people don’t say cool. They mostly call me a freak.” She shrugged, leaning against the back of the couch, rolling her head towards him.

“Well, I’m sort of weird myself, so...”

~

After tea and take-out, Sherlock fell asleep on the couch listening to Irene bitch about her friend’s douchebag boyfriend.

When he woke up the next morning , he was pretty convinced that she had been a drug induced hallucination until he found that the pile of takeaway containers in his fridge had been cleaned out, replaced with fresh leftovers and that he had a text from a Irene asking if he was still alive.

A grin curved the corners of his mouth.

~

Irene, while not odd in the same way Sherlock was, was definitely weird in her own right.

"I have a word stuck in my head."

"What word?"

"Amygdala." Sherlock’s forehead scrunched up.

"How?" She shrugged from her place upside down on the couch.

"Dunno. Might have been when I was in the elevator with the psych students." She then proceeded to repeat the word until Sherlock faked smothered her with a nearby pillow.

~

He stared at his phone and sent the Bored text before his nerves got the better of him. It was a stomach clenching couple of minutes before he got a, _J2LYK, some ppl actually have shtuff 2 do DTD._

If any expression ever said huh, it was Sherlock’s.

_What?_

_Just to let you know, people, stuff, to, during the day. English is an ever-evolving language, you gotta move with it._

_Ah._

~

Sherlock was constantly surprised by Irene. She kept coming back, the glares that she would direct at his supplies more dissuading than all the drug counselling in the world. He slowly weaned off the heroin while she taught him the products of her dissolute youth, buying him a chain of padlocks to practice picking locks and showing him the _correct_ way to pick pockets.

In return, Sherlock helped her study foreign languages from what he remembered from boarding school. _And_ what he brushed up on while she was in class. 

Snarking back and forth, they got closer than people usually got to Sherlock. He found that he didn’t really care. 

~

Irene walked into the morgue and eyed Sherlock eyeing a corpse.

“Do I want to know?”

“Post-mortem bruising.”

“Huh, the way you’re eyeing that thing makes that sound like third date material.” 

Sherlock’s eyebrows went up before he straightened and turned to her. She smiled innocently at him from the adjacent autopsy table.

~

Sherlock woke up, staring at the ceiling before turning his gaze at his hands.

He was clean.

Now, all he had to do was _stay_ that way.

He got up and walked into the living room, and stopped, staring at Irene.

She was spread out across the couch, covered in textbooks and papers.

Somehow, he didn’t think that was going to be all that hard. 

~

“You’re a singer.” Irene looked up from her textbook with an eyebrow.

“That _absolutely stunning_ deduction came from the lyrics in my bag, didn’t it,” she snarked, smirking at him. He shrugged. “Yes, I’m a singer. And you’re a violinist.”

“The violin?”

“Again with the breathtaking deductions!” She grinned. She glanced down as it started to falter. “Uh...okay. So, um,” She looked up from underneath her lashes and Sherlock swallowed hard. “I’m in a glee club and we’re supposed to bring people who can play instruments. Do you wanna come?” She backtracked, hands coming up defensively. “I mean, you don’t have to, but-”

“I’ll come.”

“-I’d like-really?” She grinned. “Awesome.”

The next friday, Sherlock was standing in the hallway of Irene’s college, watching all the button-up shirts walk past.

When he finally walked in, Irene did not look happy. She was the only other tshirt in a sea of formal clothing (self rescuing princess) and she looked less than a minute away from beating the crap out of the self-entitled rich boy who was obviously not taking no for an answer.

“So, what’re we actually doing here?” Irene turned, and whether or not Sherlock’s brain stuttered at Irene’s grin was his own business.

“Search me.” Sherlock barely gave the guy (extremely annoyed) a glance when he walked off, moving towards Irene, following her as everyone went for seats in the area-like set up.

An older man cleared his throat and all of them turned to him.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming today. We are going to do a practical demonstration. It will probably be a significant part of your grade.” He smirked. “No pressure.” A titter ran through the assembled. “Anybody want to go first?”

Sherlock’s hand snapped up before the professor finished asking.

“Ah, yes! You would like to go first, Mr...”

“Holmes.” He smirked at Irene’s bitchface and looked back up at the professor. “And what should I do?” The professor gestured to one of the two bar stools.

“Play the most complicated music you know.” Sherlock got up and walked over, turning to see the professor turning to Irene with a raised eyebrow and a hand towards the other stool. “Irene.”

Irene huffed and got up, glaring at Sherlock as she perched on the stool.

Sherlock pulled out his violin and tuned up. Once he got it tuned perfectly, he started to play.

Once he was done, Irene’s eyebrow was up.

“Scheherazade solo?”

“Yep.” The professor smiled in a way that could only be described as predatory.

“Irene?”

“Yeah?”

“Sing it.” Irene groaned and rubbed her forehead.

“Water, please.” The professor tossed her a bottle of water, which she took a couple of glugs of before she did as ordered.

After which, there was a loud, stunned silence, during which Irene downed the rest of her water. She twisted the bottle with a sharp _crack_ , making everyone jump. She pointed the contorted bottle at Sherlock, whose throat had gone dry.

“I sorta hate you right now.” Sherlock swallowed, and even then his voice still clicked.

“Oh, well. I’ll just have to hold off on the chocolate I owe you.” Irene squinted at him.

“You are an evil, evil man, Sherlock Holmes.”

~

Irene came over one night and collapsed on the couch, not happy. Sherlock glanced down at her before telling her about an adulterous banker he’d seen at the park, with three kids and a mistress who was using all his money. He talked as her hand grabbed his wrist, index and middle finger centering on his pulse.

He stopped talking and just watched as she centered herself.

“What’s up?”

“There was a grant that came in from some Hound Corporation.” She rubbed her face.“They want interns to start up their branch in Netherland. My professor suggested me, and it’s pretty much finished up.” She groaned. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve been trying to get out of it forever. We have to set up the business and then we need to show the people who’ll actually be working there how it works. Apparently, it isn’t all that important, that’s why he’s starting it with interns. There’s going to be some big formal party and I really don’t know how to slow dance.”She looked up at him when she realized that he had tensed. “What?”

“That’s my father’s company.” He shook his head. “Sorry. Let’s show you.”

She yelped a, “What?” when he got up, pulling her up after him and into his arms.

“Stand on my feet.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Wow, really?” Sherlock got a lofty look, placing one of her hands on his shoulder and taking the other.

“It is a perfectly respectable way to teach slow dance that means there isn’t any staring at feet or stepping on toes. Stand on my feet.”

They spent five minutes trying, and failing, until music drifted up from the downstairs apartment. They stopped.

"Well, that's serendipitous."

"Is that-" 

"The Way You Look Tonight."

It went much faster after that, Irene gaining enough confidence that she was available to be spun, finishing off the song with a dip.

_Mmhmm...and the way you look tonight._

Sherlock brought Irene up slowly, leaving them slightly out of breath and with barely any room between them. Irene licked her lips and Sherlock found himself strangely drawn to them.

They kissed. It was sweet and romantic and perfect. Sherlock wanted to lock that moment away forever. He wanted to record it and watch it on a permanent loop.

They finally pulled away, their foreheads touching. Irene snickered.

"The day before I leave. Of _course_."

~

Irene was gone for 8 months. She sent letters from her apartment, describing her day. Sherlock read them, and then closed his eyes and played them on her voice, so it was like the good old days.

His favorite letter was in a blue envelope, obviously stationary from a large and important hotel. She'd written it when she was at the party.

_They played The song, and I almost laughed. One of my classmates, who has the most obvious crush on me, just asked me to dance. I said no. I almost followed it up with, "because there's really only one person I can dance this with and you're not him", and when I realized what I was about to say, I did laugh. I think I hurt his feelings. You've turned me into a Disney princess, dude. I sorta wanna hate you for it._

It was about then when Sherlock realized that when Irene said, “I sort of hate you,” She really meant, “I love you.” It put into perspective how much he really wasn’t the only one in this relationship who was sort of emotionally fucked up.

~

Without Irene around anymore (and Sherlock still sober) he started helping Homicide again.

He was working one that apparently had mob ties when he got Irene's last letter. 

He approached Lestrade the next day.

"I'll be indisposed on the 19th." Lestrade nodded.

"Okay. Can I ask why?"

"Picking a friend up from the airport." He ignored the bruiser who tried to flex as he left the station.

~

Sherlock was just getting ready to leave for Heathrow when he got a call from Lestrade.

"We got a new development in their case."

"Can this wait, I have-"

"Sherlock." Sherlock froze with his coat halfway on. "Just...come."

~

Sherlock stared at the computer as the tech guy hit replay again.

" **Drop the Reilly case, or you can tell Holmes he can say goodbye to his girlfriend.** " Irene's voice piped up in the background.

" **Oh, for fucks sake, really? We-** " there was the sound of skin on skin contact. " ** _Ow_.** "

" **Do you ever shut up?** "

" **I spent a lot of time talking to Holmes. I wasn't exactly quiet when I first met him, but I'm eons more talky now.** " There was a gust of air that Sherlock heard as Irene getting a gun’s muzzle stuck against her jaw.

“ **Tell him to get off the Reilly case.** ”

“ **Get the gun away from me.** ” There was a pause. “ **Alright, Sherlock Holmes, you listen to me.** ” There was the sound of footsteps moving away. “ **If you _dare_ get off that case and they let me go, I am tracking you down and beating the _crap_ out of you.** ” There was the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps and the sound of another smack again.

“ **Bitch-** ”

“ **Remember, douchebag? American. We don’t listen to accents _anything_ like yours.** ”

The second the recording clicked off, Sherlock started deducing left and right, bullying Mycroft into getting British Intelligence involved. 

He was left sitting in his apartment listening to the uplink. He heard the team go in, he heard when they found her, and he heard the gunshot cut off her yelling at the kidnapped to stop being such a moro-

He stared at the machine for a split second before throwing it at the wall with a loud crack. He stood there, frozen, before stumbling for the couch, legs suddenly unwilling to hold him up.

It took one look at Mycroft to tell what he had come to say.

~

Sherlock couldn't see the body, couldn't look at her dead, opting instead to look at her luggage.

He kept her red tartan scarf.

~

Sherlock relapsed, because there was no reason to be sober anymore.

~

Sherlock left the letters at Hemdale because he'd assumed they'd be packed with the rest of his belongings and sent to the house.

He blends them when Joan hands them to him for two reasons;

One- because even though she hasn't been lying when she said she hadn't read them, anyone else could have. He didn't want evidence that Sherlock Holmes had feelings to be well known.

Two- he has them memorized by heart, and they aren't in Her voice on paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Sherlock plays: 
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0UBMgR2gk


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. This has been done for a while, actually, I've just been lazy about uploading it. 
> 
> Thanks again to Liz (now qsinoroyale) for betaing!
> 
> I'm not sure if I should write more, or what. Thoughts?

Joan wasn’t really sure about Sherlock. Out of all of the rehabilitated addicts that she’d worked with, he was definitely the most memorable. 

Considering the people she’d helped rehabilitate, that was saying something.

She was curiously committed to helping him, too. She didn’t even know why, he just...hit a button that made her _care_. Her mom was right, she did like working with Sherlock. It was... _fun_.

~

The first time she met Sherlock, or rather, that entire day, reminded her of a conversation she once had with a stranger.

It was at a bar in Hoboken between cases. It’d been a particularly interesting one, as the patient having trouble with the idea that clothes should be on his body. She ran a finger over the rim of her glass. There was a quiet laugh from above her and she looked up.

The girl was pretty, longish red hair in a ponytail that curled slightly at the ends and eyes like topaz, she was smirking.

“Long day?”

“Long six weeks.” The girl winced sympathetically.

“Oh, I know what that’s like. She tapped the chair she was leaning on. “Can I sit here?” Joan raised an eyebrow.

“I dunno,” she said, eyebrow quirked up. “Are you cool enough to sit with the Cool Asians?” The girl laughed.

“Cool Asians? I only see one.” Jon laughed and gestured towards the empty seat, which the girl pulled out and sat down in, placing her drink in front of her. It was pink and frozen looking. Joan gestured at it.

“For the taste or for the high alcohol content.” The girl looked it over.

“Both. I hate how alcohol tastes. If I’m going to drink something with it in it, it has to taste nothing like alcohol. Unless I want quick brain death.” She sighed, and then looked up. “Irene.”

“Joan. Nice to meet you.”

“Same.”

They talked about everything, from art to work (something both women skimped on the details of, but managed to complain about all the same) to exes to old lives to things they missed. 

Irene, her hair coming out of her scrunchie, swirled the contents of her glass around It seemed that, the drunker she got, the less concerned she was about how it tasted.

“And he was...different. And nice. And funny, and smart, and clever and everything I could ever want, and then I was sent far enough away that he couldn’t follow me and then I was sent halfway across the world.”

“Sucks.”

“Oh, yeah.” She pulled out her phone and glared at it blearily as it buzzed at her. “Crap. I gotta go.”

“Wait!” Joan didn’t know why, but she leaned across the table and took Irene’s phone, the only thing keeping her tipsy fingers from fumbling the keys was her time as a surgeon. “Here. It’s been fun.” Irene grinned, twirling the phone unconsciously into her pocket. 

“Yeah.” She saluted. “It’s been fun.”

Joan didn’t hear from Irene again, but she had happy memories. Talking to Irene had made her feel better.

Funny, but nowadays when Joan thought of Irene, Sherlock always came to mind. 

~

Joan had woken up to an empty house and a text that Sherlock had gone crime solving, followed by texts letting her know where he was. Joan rolled her eyes, contemplating going back to sleep, before rolling out of bed and getting dressed. 

She was just about to leave the house when the doorbell wrang. Joan opened the door ready to beat off some more of Sherlock's 'experiments', but stopped when he saw who it actually was.

"Irene!" The ginger blinked at her, surprised.

"Joan?" Irene grinned. "Hi! How've you been?"

"Good. You?"

"Same. Is there a Sherlock Holmes here?"

"No, I was just going to go and meet him. You want to come?"

"Yeah, thanks."

They made small talk all the way to the precinct, were Joan led the way to the Captain's office. When they got there, Sherlock was deducing at the room. He seemed almost finished, though.

"And the man was awful with a lock pick, look at the scratches."

"Which one?" Joan glanced at Irene when she realized she'd been the one to say it, her gaze going back to Sherlock as he started to respond.

"What do you mean, which one-" He cut off, eyes wide, when he saw who it was. Irene straightened up from where she'd been leaning against the doorframe and walked over.

"I mean which one, smartass." She tapped the photo. " _These_ scratches, yeah, the guy obviously had little to no idea what he was doing. _These_ scratches, however," She tapped a different part of the picture, "We're made by someone who knew exactly what they were doing." She turned towards Sherlock, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. Sherlock's mouth worked for a few seconds before any sound came out.

"Irene?" Irene grinned wide.

"Hey, Sherlock." Sherlock considered her. 

"What happened that night?"

Irene looked down and smirked at the floor. She looked up and walked forward, perching delicately on his toes, before kissing him. He smiled into it, eyes closing, an arm wrapping itself possessively around her waist.

Gregson looked amused. Bell looked like he was about to keel over from shock, which made Gregson even more amused. He pushed Bell into a chair and gently pushed Bell's head between his knees before walking over to Joan.

"Ms Watson, who's this?" Joan looked back at the couple, who were conferring over the crime scene photos. Her smile grew when she saw Sherlock's proprietary hand on Irene's waist.

"Captain Gregson, meet Irene Adler, the one that got away."


End file.
